(3,637) “Eyre’s Folly.”—There are scores of places in all parts of England bearing the ancient name “The Folly.” I constantly find them precisely on the prehistoric straight-sighted trackways. It is certain that the word did not mean, as now, “foolishness.” The “N. E. D.” quotes Richard Jefferies and others using it for “a clump of fir trees on the crest of a hill,” and if so it was a sighting point for a trackway. It was sometimes spelt “volly,” and has been surmised to be connected with “folk.” In this case it would be a corruption of “folk-ley,” a track past the folk-moot or the folk-meadow. I do not know this particular “Folly,” but have no doubt that the tale, universal in all counties, now attached to it is that one Eyre (the surname, of course, varies) built in haste and repented at leisure.—A. W., Hereford.
Source info: Not given, but clearly same journal as 122d; date from 100c.